


survival is built out of luck

by broken_social_contract



Series: each choice, a universe [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 14:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broken_social_contract/pseuds/broken_social_contract
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘on earth / survival is built out of luck and treatment centers’ - Matthew Dickman </p>
<p>(or, the one where Emma and August are adopted by people who love them)</p>
            </blockquote>





	survival is built out of luck

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

She gets out of the hospital an hour after the end of her shift – she spends most of that time begging a technician to squeeze her patient in for an angiogram and another few minutes cursing at her computer, because the hospital has updated the software again and she can’t find the damn button to upload her orders (she’s a _doctor_ , not a computer scientist).

 

Sure, she’s an hour late for own birthday dinner, but at least she isn’t covered in her patients’ blood or vomit and she miraculously remembered to change into clean scrubs, freshly stolen from the hospital linen room before booking it out of there.

 

Emma pats herself on the back for that.

 

She checks the score on the Sox game before she scans the crowd for her brother. He finds her first, somehow, and she turns her head in the direction of his voice.

 

“Happy birthday!”

 

August rises from his seat and wraps her in a hug, arms squeezing too tight. Emma knows he’s at least five drinks in from the way he sways into her, body angled so that Emma has to lean back to keep them both from toppling over. She bumps into a man behind her, who grumbles at them under his breath.

 

“What the hell, August? I’m only an hour late.” She pushes him away. Hard enough that he falls into his seat, back crashing into the edge of the counter.

 

“I started earlier than that,” he grouses, arranging himself properly on the stool. Emma catches the way his eyes flash with something cold and vicious, but he snaps out of it after a second and grins at her wistfully. “I missed you, kid.” He catches her eye and his mouth sort of twitches, wobbles really between a smile and a frown.

 

It takes a second for Emma to realize that August _might cry_ , which really: _what the fuck._

 

“Jesus,” Emma breathes out. Her voice straddles the line between exasperation and wonder because only her layabout big brother would have the nerve to call her up on her own birthday with some sort of agenda after eight months of radio silence.

 

“Are you out of a job, again? Because, you know, you don’t need to turn on the waterworks for me. I’ll help, even if I give you shit about it. I’m not an asshole.”

 

“I have a job,” he mutters. He grabs the half-empty bottle of Corona in front of him and quickly downs the rest of it, all the while glaring at her.

 

Emma watches the amber liquid race down the neck of the bottle. “Do you want to check back into rehab, then? Did you piss someone off and now they want to kill you?” She runs through all the possible scenarios in her head until she comes full stop at worst-case-scenario.

 

A cheer rumbles across the bar over a triple during the beat Emma’s world stutters on.

 

“Or – oh god, are you – are you _sick_?” Emma’s voice cracks on that last word, and it leaves an awful taste in her mouth, metallic and salty, like the word somehow nicked her tongue on the way out.

 

“Emma, stop” He holds up both hands in the air, fingers spread apart, reminding her of a traffic cop trying to stem the flow of cars into an intersection. “None of the above. Do you remember what I told you about your twenty-eighth birthday?”

 

All thoughts in Emma’s head crumble at that, and her stomach goes into freefall with it. The words hit a landmine that explodes with a vivid memory of twenty-three year old August sitting in a wheelchair and staring blankly out a hospital window, a cocktail of drugs in his system to keep him from screaming about magic and curses and his own body slowly killing him, slowly turning against him, slowly turning to wood.

 

“Jesus, please tell me you’ve been taking your pills.” She pinches the bridge of her nose, banishes her memories to the back of her mind before they get the best of her. She wonders if that’s what he’s been doing for eight months: chasing the shadows of his own mind. 

 

(Mom had said he was okay. He was sending postcards home. He needed space. But, damnit, she should have gone with her gut instinct and hunted him down.)

 

“Your stories aren’t real. You know they’re not real, don’t you?”

 

He ignores her and orders them a round of shots, instead. His lips are pressed into such a thin line they almost disappear from his face. It reminds her of that time she told their parents about August sneaking his high school girlfriend into his bedroom whenever they were at work.

 

August had been livid then, too.

 

She taps her shot glass against his, deciding to surrender to his whims at least for tonight. “Happy birthday to me,” she murmurs and he nods at that.

 

The liquor burns its way down, but it’s her chest that hurts more, hurts from how it feels ready to burst, leaving her with another August-shaped hole (they scar over eventually but Emma knows that scars are useless, and cause more trouble in the long run)

 

Another triple puts the Sox just one run behind. The bar erupts with a chaos of drunken cheers and whistles. Emma claps dutifully along with the crowd.

 

It’s the bottom of the ninth, though. Two outs.

 

Emma needs them to pull this off — win the game at the last second after losing by 5.

 

“So, am I still your sister, Gus?” She swallows down another shot, and waits.

 

The bar quiets down significantly. The only sounds left are low whispers discussing RBIs and the probability of winning. Emma watches August while August stares at his collection of empty bottles and shot glasses. Everyone else watches the flat screens, breath on pause (it feels like maybe they’re waiting with her).

 

Ellsbury steps up to the plate.

 

“You’re the savior, Em.”

 

He swings, and sends the ball flying.


End file.
